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"Living to wing with mirth the dreary hours. 
Or with romantic tales the heart to cheer. 
Dying, to leave a memory, like the hreath 
Of summer full of sunshine and flow^ers." 

— ^^"Sifellow, at the gr,i7'e of Wttshiiigton bx'ing 




IRVING WAS ELECTED WARDEN OF CHRIST CHURCH AFTER HIS RETURN FROM HIS MISSION 
AS UNITED STATES MINISTER TO SPAIN 



Stlfp ®^ntk l^umortst 




IFTY years ago the man most univer- 
sally esteemed by the critical few and 
the uncritical millions of American 
readers, laid down his pen. 
From that day until this there have 
been written and printed about him and his work 
uncounted pages of analysis, that have neither 
added to nor subtracted from popular apprecia- 
tion of the gentlest and most beneficent of hu- 
morists. 

It requires the lapse of half a century to deter- 
mine whether a writer has secured a permanent 
place in the temple of letters, and many surpris- 
ing reversals of judgment have occurred, while 
very few of the authors of a generation ago 
measure up to the estimate of their contempo- 
raries. 

It is safe to say that Irving's fame looms lar- 
ger with each decade, although that reputation 
does not rest most securely upon the works which 
he and his publishers no doubt deemed "import- 
ant," but upon writings that belong to a class 
generally esteemed fugitive and ephemeral. It 
is the author of the Knickerbocker and other 
Dutch character sketches, even more than the 
biographer of Washington, Mohammed or Gold- 
smith, that the world still delights to honor, but 
the whole body of his work is pervaded by a pe- 



culiarly attractive personality. One is inclined 
to accept Charles Dudley Warner's estimate, as 
thoroughlj^ sj^mpathetic, if not comprehensive; 

"I think the calm work of Irving will stand 
when much of the more startling and perhaps 
more brilliant intellectual achievements of this 
age have passed away. There is something that 
made Scott and Irving personally loved by the 
millions of their readers, who had only the dim- 
mest ideas of their personality^ This was some 
qualit}^ perceived in what they wrote. * * * 
Irving's literature, walk round it and measure it 
by whatever critical instruments you will, is a be- 
neficent literature." 

Whence comes that "quality" which Warner 
discovers in Irving's work? Truly one is inclined 
to believe with Dogberry that "to write and read 
come by nature," for how else can we account for 
the production by an author of only twenty-six 
years of a humorous histoiy of New York that 
has taken stronger hold of the imagination of 
successive generations of readers than any seri- 
ous presentation of its stor}^; that raised its au- 
thor's reputation, as a master of style, to a par 
with that of Addison, and gave to the Metropolis 
its titulary diety. But for the comfort of thos^e 
whose early work has not been recognized, it may 
be pointed out that Irving's genius matured after 
he had reached middle age, was indeed passing 
rapidly towards that mellow time of life when 
men living under more modern conditions are 
advised to retire. 

The "Gentle Humorist" was past fifty years 
when he Avas finally able to follow the bent of his 
inclination and settle in his chosen nook beside 
the Tappan Zee. 



To a multitude of more or less romantic people 
the fashion of making pilgrimages is always an 
attractive one. There are highways t^at are little 
known except as paths that lead to some one or 
another of the world's shrines. As men went a 
thousand years ago with staff and "sandal shoon" 
to Jerusalem, so now they journey to Stratford, 
or Stoke Pogis, to the House of tlie Seven Ga- 
bles, or to Sunny side. It is a strong and defensi- 
ble instinct that makes us desire to see and touch 
the things that were familiar to those whose im- 
pulses have moved us, and whose thoughts we 
have made our own. 

Sunny side and its surroundings have become to 
the world, as it were, the centre of Irving's Coun- 
try, and truly the cottage that he elaborated from 
Van Tassel's little stone farmhouse was as much 
a work of his humorous imagination as were the 
tales of Rip Van Winkle, Dolph Heyliger, or 
even the immortal Ichabod. There was a strong 
suggestion of whimsical humor that pervaded the 
whole architectural motive of the house and cul- 
minated in a craz}^ weather-vane that he gravely 
declared was brought from Holland by Gil Da- 
vis, the King of Coney Island. 

Irving made large sums — large, that is, for his 
day — by his literary labors, but only the most 
rigid personal economy rendered his income suf- 
ficient for his living expenditures, and his indus- 
try was unremitting till the very close of his life. 
The reason for this insufficiency of income was 
twofold. First, the cottage which he had planned 
as a mere summer retreat became an unsatiable 
devourer of money. It speedily outgrew all his 
plans, and was ultimately the permanent home 
not only of the bachelor author, but of a family 



connection that was regimental in proportions. 

With the same matter-of-fact acceptation of 
family responsibility that had characterized his 
brother's generous attitude towards himself in 
more youthful days, he opened his doors, as his 
heart was already open to "Ebenezer's five girls 
and himself also whenever he could be spared 
from town. Sister Catharine and her daughter; 
Mr. Davis occasionally, with casual visits from 
all the rest of our family connection." No wonder 
that he added "The cottage, therefore, is never 
lonely." 

In 1835 he wrote to one of his brothers: "I 
have just returned from a visit of two or three 
days to Tarrytown to take a look at my cottage. 

It has risen from the foundations 

since my previous visit I intend 

to write a legend or two about it and its vicinity 
by way of making it pay for itself." 

The "legend or two" became world famous, 
and have been translated into so many languages 
that the dwellers by the Seine, the Rhine, the 
Danube or the Mediterranean are almost as fa- 
miliar with "Wolfert's Roost" and the "Legend 
of Sleepy Hollow" as are those whose good for- 
tune it has been to live beside the Tappan Zee. 

There is a delightful naive confession of com- 
mercialism in the quotation given above. Frankly 
the child of genius owns the motive which we 
must accept as the real genesis of our local scrip- 
ture; but with the motive, the hint of commercial- 
ism ceases. The artist creator, with a purpose as 
definite and as sensible as that which animates 
the merchant when he cuts off a yard of ribbon, 
or the woodsman when he grinds his axe, opens 
that Pandora box which is imagination, and living 



characters escape into the world of letters, never 
again to be caught or reconfined. 

"By way of making it pay for itself," Ichabod 
Crane, literary descendant of Jesse JNIerwin of 
Kinderhook, was brought into being. Jesse JNIer- 
win died long ago, but Ichabod is immortal. 
Katrina Van Tassel was created by the same 
impulse, and so were Brom Bones, old Balthas, 
Gunpowder and the various Dramatis Personae 
of the legend. 

"By way of making it pay for itself," Van 
Tassel fired his great goose gun at the British 
fleet in the Tappan Zee, and the echoes of that 
shot have reverberated around the world almost 
as noisily as did the report of the gunpowder 
burned at Lexington. 

One listens with a smile to the efforts of this 
wiseacre or that one, to prove that the real scene 
of the Legend of Sleep}^ Hollow was here or 
there, or that the real persons were so-and-so. 
There is only one land of legend; only one Ar- 
cadie ; only one Forest of Domremy : thej^ are in 
the sublunary kingdoms of imagination. 

But Sunnyside, the home of the master artist, 
is real: a taxable entity. When in boyhood the 
future dean of American letters rowed along the 
shore of the Tappan Zee from the home of his 
kinsman Paulding, and finally rested on the 
grassy bank under the willows near the dwelling 
of his friend, Mr. Ferris, he resolved that some 
time he would return there to live. That spot, 
even in the callow days when he roamed the woods 
and shot squirrels with the future Secretary 
of the Nav}% was his chosen home. Years after- 
ward, in the maturity of his powers and his fame, 
he was drawn back by a strong though invisible 



hand to the place where his heart was fixed. 

From the recollections of one who knew Wash- 
ington Irving personally, the pages following 
this minute have been taken. If the present 
writer may be pardoned for adding a personal 
note, he would refer to an ineffaceable though 
juvenile impression of a face that seemed all be- 
nignity, a hand placed in benediction upon a verj^ 
unworthy tow-head, and the tones of a voice that 
had charmed a world of gentle and masterly men. 

A little while after I saw Irving, the walls of 
the house that he loved held him no longer. The 
doors, opened for him for the last time, never 
admitted his living form again. But the territory 
that lies between the quaint old mansion with all 
its Dutch affectations of crow-step gables, weath- 
er-cock and tile, and its clustering memories of 
poet and prince, of emperor and savant, and the 
quiet resting place in the God's Acre beyond the 
old Dutch Church, is his own. Men may build 
where they please, and what they please, and a 
hundred title deeds cover the fields that lay be- 
tween the infrequent houses when Sunnyside was 
erected; but the pilgrims from over the world 
still journey to breathe the atmosphere with 
which he enveloped the creatures of his fancy, and 
in spite of boundaries and title deeds, the master 
artist "holds in mortmain still his old estate." 

Edgar Mai/hew Bacon. 




THE PEW WASHINGTON IRVING OCCUPIED FOR MANY YEARS 



'S the walls of Sunnyside were rising, so 

A^ were those of Christ Church, and Irv- 
)/ ing's memor}^ is interwoven with both. 
"The ivy upon the Church Tower 
was planted by his hand, a cutting 
from the vine which now mantles, in rich luxuri- 
ance, the walls of Sunnyside. 

"Within Christ Church there still remains his 
pew, cushioned as when he last occupied it, in 
which many pilgrims to this shrine of Irving's 
religious life, love for a moment to sit. 

"Irving was elected Warden of Christ Church 
after his return from his mission as United States 
Minister to Spain. The office of Warden he held 
until his death. 

"At a Vestry meeting he once remarked that 
he had now taken up the collection in Church for 
a very long time, and he ventured to ask if some 
one of his juniors in the Vestrj'- would not relieve 
him of this duty. 

"George D. Morgan sprang to his feet and 
said : — 'Mr. Chairman, I protest against any such 
step on the part of Mr. Irving. It will create 
great confusion in the congregation; the sen^ice 
will be neglected, and the sermon unheeded. 
Now, when I bring my friends with me to 
Church, the first question I am asked is — Which 
is ]Mr. Irving? and all I have to say is — Mr. 
Irving is the gentleman who will bye and bye 
pass the plate in the north aisle.— But if he 
resigns this duty, I shall have to rise up in my 
pe^v and point him out to my friends (here suit- 
ing the action to the word) There he is, there he 
is.' 

"There was no more devout or attentive hearer 
in the Church than he. With all his powers of 



mind, he knew of no other spiritual sustenance 
than the Gospel of Christ; and its plain, simple 
truths, such as a little child might com^^rehend, 
were to him like the precious feeding upon the 
loaves broken in the JNIaster's hand. 

"To the citizens of New York, his native city, 
his name should be a household word, loved and 
revered; for there he wrote his first book, pluck- 
ing the quaint and venerable traditions of New 
Amsterdam, and weaving them with inimitable 
humor into Knickerbocker's veritable history of 
New York. 

"And in Tarrytown on Hudson, where he built 
his unique cottage, Sunnyside, he has so animated 
the very hills and A^allej^s around us, and has so 
peopled our neighborhood with the creations of 
his fancy, that Me accept them as real, and point 
out to our friends the old red school house in 
Sleep}'' Hollow, where Ichabod Crane taught 
school, and say, 'Yonder is the bridge over which 
his prancing steed rushed when pursued by the 
headless horseman, who there bowled his fire- 
emitting head after the luckless lover, and in the 
morning a shattered pumjikin onh^ was left as 
proof of the stoiy.' 

"Seldom has literary fame been so beautifully 
blended with personal attractiveness — seldom 
has learning and humor formed so close an alli- 
ance, as in Washington Irving. 

"It is not only by the educated, but by those 
whom Lincoln calls 'the plain people, ' that Irv- 
ing's genius is recognized and his fame secured. 
What largely evokes this universal eulogj^ is the 
presence of the 7Jian in his work. In him the af- 
fections and the intellect were beautifully blend- 
ed; the affections flowing in upon the intellect, 



tempering it with their hallowed grace and char- 
ity, and the intellect in return giving strength and 
dignity to the affections, illustrating what Cole- 
ridge so aptly terms, 'The heart in the head.' " 
Extracts from Rev. Br. J. Seldoi Spencer s 
Personal Recollections of Washington Irving. 




B> 


^ RORN ^ ' 

Aprfi 3 1783 

DIED 

Nov. 28. 185 3. 


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